PCB Design Resources and Information | Altium

Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Using SDRAM vs. DDR RAM in Your PCB Design SDRAM is a slower predecessor to DDR, but you might not need DDR for every application. Here’s how you can compare SDRAM vs DDR for your design. Read Article

PCB Testing 101: Important Methods and Metrics PCB testing must occur during fabrication, assembly, and board bring-up. Here’s how you can plan to be successful during testing and inspection. Read Article

What Goes Into Rugged Electronics Design? In this article, we’ll outline some of the common design decisions that go into rugged electronics, as well as some steps you can take to create rugged PCBAs. Read Article

Getting Started with Design Rules and Constraints Getting started with design rules can sometimes be a difficult task, but it doesn’t have to be. A proper structure Watch Video

Reduce CM Noise in Your Power Supply with Impedance Balancing You can use impedance balancing to reduce conducted common-mode noise in your power supply. Here’s how it works and some experimental results. Read Article

Using Altium 365 for Sharing Simulations in the Cloud Altium 365 allows you to share your cloud simulation models and data with your signal integrity team and test engineer. Read Article

Customize Your PCB Drill Sizes With Altium Designer Every PCB will need some holes, vias, slots, and other features that are defined in a PCB layout. These features need to be reflected in fabrication documents, and designers need tools to help them automate this process of creating documentation directly from their designs. It’s easy to keep track of your holes, vias, electrical behavior, and much more in Altium Designer, the industry’s top PCB design application for professional design engineers Read Article

Design Your Metal Core PCB in Altium Designer Most printed circuit boards use a thick FR4 core layer to provide structural stability and interior copper layers for a multilayer PCB. If problems like excessive heat and low thermal dissipation are required in your particular application, you might consider designing with a metal core PCB. You’ll see other advantages like greater structural integrity, as well as a natural EMI shield thanks to the internal metal core. These circuit boards Read Article

IPC Classes and Complying with IPC Standards for PCB Design Whether you work in electronics design, manufacturing, or even defense, the alphabet soup of standards organizations is extensive and may seem daunting. The IPC standards are among the most widely accepted and important standards for PCB design and manufacturing. IPC standards will influence how a designer creates their board and how they will prepare it for production in different industries. These standards are meant to ensure performance and Read Article

PCB Routing Guidelines for Altium Designer Routing traces and vias on a PCB design is often thought of as a simple task. After setting up the footprint library and then perfecting the placement of the components on the board, it would seem a relatively easy matter to simply “hook ‘em up.” While that may have been true back in the days of routing low-speed TTL DIP components on simple boards, today’s design requirements are much more complex. Whether you’re working through a high-speed PCB Read Article

Component Shortages Report from IHS What are the coping strategies available for PCB Designers to face the challenging impact of component shortages in the industry? Watch and learn in this episode with expert Greg Wood of IHS. Read Article

New Dimensions of PCB Simulation Judy Warner: What was the technology impetus behind forming Avishtech as a company? Keshav Amla: The simple answer is that we saw some major pain points in the existing electronics design and development approach, relating to signal integrity, manufacturability and reliability of PCBs. As far as signal integrity, loss modeling was a source of major consternation, but an even bigger cause for concern was the inability to predict manufacturability Read Article

How to Speed Up Your DFM Report Process in the Cloud Make sure your design will be produced with high quality and yield with our DFM analysis guidelines. You’ll want to perform DFM analysis at multiple stages during the design process. Read Article

Antipad Diameter, Crosstalk, and IBM’s Results from IPC APEX EXPO 2021 Interlayer crosstalk begins with antipad diameters, and IBM’s results help us see how antipad diameter on back-drilled PTHs affect signal integrity. Read Article

Microstrip Ground Clearance: How Close is Too Close? Make sure to account for microstrip ground clearance when using copper pour on the surface layer. We’ll examine what happens with microstrips, striplines, and coplanar waveguides. Read Article

How to Design Castellated Holes in a PCB for an SMD Module Modules on small PCBs can be quickly surface-mounted to a carrier board withe castellated holes. Here’s how you can design castellated holes. Read Article

Reinventing the Business of Electronics Altium’s Chief Ecosystem Officer, Ted Pawela, and Altium’s Chief Software Architect, Leigh Gawne, join us to give us information about the launching of Nexar—an open ecosystem with zero cost. Read Article